1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of online discussion forum management and more particularly to the field of notification processing for postings to a thread of an online discussion forum.
2. Description of the Related Art
Several collaborative mechanisms subsist for supporting the activities of remotely disposed collaborators in a computing communications network environment. First and foremost, electronic mail (e-mail) has formed the backbone of asynchronous communications; however, e-mail alone cannot support an extended conversation amongst a group of participants with any degree of efficiency. Likewise, instant messaging, though synchronous in nature, cannot support an extended conversation amongst a group of participants with any degree of efficiency. The online discussion forum, however, has proven quite effective in coordinating an asynchronous conversation amongst a group of participants with great efficiency.
In an online discussion forum, a conversation for a particular topic can be established as a thread of postings by different collaborators. Individual responses to a posting can be viewed as nodal branches to the posting and responses to a response to a posting can be viewed as nodal branches to the response and so forth. Different topics of conversation, of course, can enjoy their own threads in order to provide a high degree of organization. In this way, collaborators can asynchronously view an entire conversation in hierarchical fashion with some sense of chronology for the postings. Several analogous forms of the online discussion forum include wikis and blogs.
In a discussion forum, when a collaborator provides a post to a thread, the collaborator must repeatedly return to the thread to determine whether or not a response has been provided to the post. Requiring collaborators to continuously return to a thread to detect a responsive posting can be inefficient however, though such is the nature of asynchronous communications. Notwithstanding, where a thread enjoys lively activity, the conversation can become near synchronous in nature. Despite the synchronous nature of such interactions, collaborators still must continuously return to the thread refreshing the view of the thread as the case may be in order to detect a response to a posting.
To address the need to manage near synchronous interactivity in a discussion forum, some collaborative tools permit collaborators to subscribe to a thread in a discussion forum and to be notified by e-mail upon detecting activity on the subscribed thread. Still, the subscriber must check e-mail often to determine whether or not a collaborator has responded to a posting. Additionally, the subscriber upon detecting a response must return to the thread to continue the conversation. As another, solution would, collaborators can initiate an instant messaging session with a poster of a response; however, the content of the instant messaging session will persist externally to the discussion forum depriving other collaborators of a record of the interactions in the instant messaging session.